Ouroboros
by Faith Accompli

Disclaimer: Ginny, the rest of the Weasleys, Potter, Voldemort, the Malfoys and all other characters from the Harry Potter books belong to Rowling. Characters not from the books probably belong to me. The Egyptian gods belong to themselves and the long-dead people who worshipped 'em. Not for profit (hah!) but for the fun of it.
Author's Notes: This started from a vague whim that turned into an actual plot, and I thank Dia for making me read Peabody. thoughtful Unless thank isn't quite the word...
For the fifth time in as many nights, Ginny awoke to find herself choking back a scream.

The nightmares had been what started it. Oh, not nightmares like Harry Potter had, accurate renditions of whatever Lord Voldemort was doing or planning, even if she had something of a case on which to almost expect them--she hadn't walked away from her encounter with Tom Riddle unscarred--but just dreams that were simply bad. Pain, blood, torture, all the things that young wannabe-Death Eater teens with no knowledge of what it was actually like wanted.

She could hazard a guess on those dreams being predominantly a product of an overactive imagination, an unsubstantiated sense of self-importance and a deep-rooted amount of insecurity, but that didn't render her feelings on the subject any less firm. Malfoy's parents had been responsible for the debacle of her first year, her possession and her abuse, with Lord Voldemort back she had no doubt that he might be told of her failure and retribution would be exacted on her as well as on Potter.

That, and Potter's ties to her family were all too strong thanks to her brother's friendship with the boy and her mother's wholehearted acceptance of him as part of the family, it all added up to make too many ties between them. If the Death Eaters and their lord wanted to make the boy suffer, killing her family would strike close to his heart.

She wasn't much of a Gryffindor, she realised as she curled around the rather battered teddy-bear that Bill and Charlie had given her for her third birthday, not when others were thinking of ways to fight Voldemort and she was thinking of the best way she could run away and hide. Her confidence had taken a thorough beating in her first year at Hogwarts, but it had given her a sense of perspective that most of them lacked and helped her get away from the Gryffindor machismo that prevailed over whatever intellect her housemates possessed. Hell, she even had a friend in Slytherin thanks to the way her year of Gryffindors avoided her like the plague after the rumours that had spread in her second year. That should have reassured her, for if nothing else she might get a moment's more warning than her housemates recieved, but...

'I'll be no use in whatever fight comes looking for us, all I can do is die. I don't want to die, I'm a selfish little cow but I want to be a selfish little cow who's still breathing.' It wasn't a brave sentiment, nor a noble one, hardly daring by any standards, but it summed up her best thoughts on the matter. She would only be a target, she wasn't well-educated or powerful enough to fight back, and she had no desire to act as a human shield for Harry like his mother had, despite her mother's best attempts to make her and Harry an item.

Realistically, she had to get out. She was not going back to Hogwarts in September, even St. Mungo's would be a better option. Unlike much of her house, she realised as she got up and pulled her dressing gown on, she had absolutely no faith in Dumbledore's ability to protect the school. If he was such an almighty and powerful wizard, he'd have stopped Lord Voldemort before the Slytherin had ever made a proper bid for power. If he was such an almighty and powerful wizard, he'd actually be doing something to stop the snake before it devoured the world.

Sneaking downstairs quietly on an indirect route to the kitchen that avoided passing her mum and dad's room, she found it empty and poured herself a glass of milk, taking a chair with a sigh of relief. She wouldn't have minded Percy being up this early, but Ron, Fred, George or her parents would have been too much. They never listened to her, even if she'd felt like talking it out, but after her first year...

Her mother had a habit of trying to make her say what was on her mind and paying little or no attention to her answers, and her father... well, he was her father. Muggle-obsessed and not much good at helping out with her psychological problems.

A soft whoosh of air behind her indicated that someone had just Apparated into the kitchen, and with her mind so full of dark thoughts she immediately jumped to the conclusion that it had to be Lord Voldemort, or at least some of his friends, promptly falling out of her seat with an undignified squeak.

"Ginny?" Bill's voice came from the direction of the Apparated person, so logic dictated it wasn't a big threat, and she turned around as she was, accepting his hand and help up from the floor before she looked to see the mess she'd created when falling. The glass had slipped from her hand and was unbroken, being of cheap plastic, but the milk had spilt across the entire table and was dripping off the far end.

"Yeah. Shit, Mum's going to murder me," she mumbled, looking around for a dishrag. "You probably didn't hear, you got in too late last night, she's trying to save as much as she can 'cos Potter's coming to visit in a week, along with Hermione."

"I don't think Mum will kill you over spilt milk," Bill chided but didn't scold her for swearing, waving his wand with a muttered spell that she couldn't properly hear. The milk started to spin and turned into a small waterspout-equivalent, dust and dirt and sweet-wrapper separating themselves from the liquid before it landed back in her glass, leaving him to present it to her with a courtly bow and a finishing comment of "...especially if she doesn't know it happened."

"Thanks," she said softly, reclaiming her seat. He looked for a moment as if he was going to take the next one over, but instead dropped his still-folded newspaper on the table and ambled over to the kettle.

"What dragged you out of bed so early?" Bill inquired of her as he started making a pot of tea, shaking the tea-canister and frowning into it at the level of the contents. After a moment he simply poured half into the pot, adding boiling water and bringing it to the table with muttered curses interspersed with 'hot!'s and 'ow's. "Usually we have to dump you in the bathtub and run water on you before you're even vaguely conscious. I'm still on Cairo time, what's your excuse?"

"Don't remind me," she tried her hardest to scowl at him over her glass, but relented when he poured her a cup of tea and handed it over. "Bad dreams."

"The usual?" He had been the one to hear her screams in the mornings after Tom Riddle had left her, he had been the one to pat her on the back and hug her and tell her that he'd try to keep her safe, when her parents and her other brothers had been out playing tourist in the tombs. Percy had watched over her in the night, but even he couldn't ignore parental dictates and refuse to go into the bloody tombs in favour of babysitting his little sister. No, their mother had decided that she would be left in Bill's apartment when they went into the confined spaces that would supposedly bring back traumatic memories--

--as if she didn't carry them with her every damned minute of every damned day, the moment she stopped thinking about anything else. But she had been exhausted and unable to put up a decent fight as to why she shouldn't be excluded, and so she'd slept. Slept, only to awaken with Tom's laughter in her mind and her cries deafening to her own ears.

She shook her head, curling her fingers around the cup and sipping slowly before adding milk and sugar. "No."

"Want to talk about it?"

"I don't know." She wasn't being at all helpful as he tried to find out what her problem was, and she knew it. "Sorry. It's just...one of those things."

"Life? School? Boys?" he asked, raising an eyebrow curiously. "Girls?"

"Hah. That's the least of my worries, brother-mine," she gave him a deliberately quizzical look, reaching out a hand to pat his arm gently. "If you're having girl trouble, though..."

"I wouldn't ask my little sister for help. There are some things you don't need to know about me." Rapping her lightly on the knuckles with his teaspoon, Bill dropped the semblance of teasing humour. "Really, Gin, what's wrong? You don't look so good."

"Oh, thank you." He didn't seem at all taken aback by her biting sarcasm, and she swept her hair back with one hand to give herself time to gain composure. Suddenly, the depths of the teacup were looking entirely too interesting. "I'm..."

She was...stupid. Bill lived in Egypt. There had to be a school in Egypt. What little she knew of African magic indicated that it was substantially different from European magic, probably something Lord Voldemort knew little or nothing about because he had focused on the European angle. Lord Voldemort hadn't set foot on the African continent openly, and he wouldn't bother following one little girl there, no matter if she had ruined his plans in her first year of school.

"I'm scared. Lord Voldemort's risen, Potter's going to be his first target, and even if he doesn't intentionally want to kill me I'd really like to not be in the way at the time," her voice had begun to shake, but she swallowed quickly and focused again on her tea. "Take me to Egypt with you."

To Bill's credit he didn't putter about asking her if she was sure, if she'd thought this through, if she really meant it. No, he got straight to the point. "Mum is going to kill us. They'll never find our bodies."

"You will?"

"You're my sometimes-annoying little blister, but I love you. You've been through enough in this fight already, and if being far away'll make you feel better, you may as well start packing your bags."

She couldn't help the little girlie squeal that broke free as she jumped up, this time not knocking anything over, hugging him and kissing him on the cheek with the most enthusiasm she'd shown for anything in a long time. "Thank you."

"We still have to tell--ah, ask Mum, remember."

"Ask Mum what?"

.

"Ginny's moving to Egypt," Bill stated cheerily, gesturing for Percy to help himself to a chair and a cup of tea. "Doesn't enjoy the climate here."

"And you're not just referring to the weather, I'm sure," Percy commented, his tone dry in the very extreme as he took a cup, milk without sugar, and pointed to the door. "Mum's waking up, we might want to continue this conversation where she'll not join in until you have a very convincing argument prepared."

"Good thinking," she nodded, rising carefully and refilling her drink before she started for the garden. "C'mon, then."

Flopping down on the lawn beneath a tree without a care in the world for her nightwear, but a curse for her stupid cup of tea that slopped half of itself down her hand, Ginny waited with a curious expression until Bill and Percy joined her. "Convincing argument?"

"Mum's not going to like you running off to 'strange heathen countries', even if we do manage to convince her that it's for your own safety," Percy clarified, sitting down with a lot less grace than she and Bill had managed. He began polishing his spectacles on his shirt, a nervous gesture he'd had ever since he was...ever since she could remember, actually, and frowned before he put them back on. "I'd planned to talk Mum into letting you live with Penny and I when we start flatting next month, and was going to ship you off to Beauxbatons because that school doesn't have the shadow of Voldemort looming over it yet...but Egypt is a much better idea."

"You...were?" she paused, struck momentarily dumb by the thought that Percy would do that for her--especially when he and his girlfriend were only just moving in together. They'd always been closer to each other than they were to the rest of their siblings because they were the odd ducks out, and he'd kept writing to her even when he hadn't contacted the others for months at school, but...

Of course, Fred, George and Ron were an ungrateful pack of wankers and she was his baby sister.

"Naturally. But Egypt is safer; Voldemort didn't recruit a single Death Eater there...the Egyptians come down very heavily on anyone practising magic for the wrong reasons...such as genocide. They're also far more organised, not having had the likes of Voldemort or Grindelwald disturbing them for almost six hundred years."

"You'll take my side when we tell Mum about it, then?"

"Yes, Gin," Percy favoured her with one of those little smirks that others rarely saw, his conspiracy-face, and he shrugged with an innocent air. "I may as well tell Mum that I'm moving out, too. Time to sever those apron strings. It's going to be family argument day!"

Bill groaned.

"So, Mum," she started casually, not looking up from her toast. She, Bill and Percy had decided that she would begin and they would join in the conversation when their mother had actually grasped what she was saying. If Bill had brought it up first it would have only turned messier, with their mother accusing him of stealing away her baby girl, the 'comfort of her old age' or somesuch rubbish, ignoring the fact that it had been Percy who raised her until he'd been sent off to Hogwarts. "I've been thinking."

"Have you, dear? That's nice," her mother answered, dashing between the stove and table with a frying pan full of bacon. "Do you want to come shopping with me? I think we can afford a nice shirt for you to wear when Harry and Hermione arrive--"

"N...not really. Percy and Penny took me shopping the other day, remember? I have clothes, Mum." Could the woman be any more dense? Yes, a new shirt to wear when Voldemort's number-one enemy showed up, that would cure all her ills. It could get pretty blood-splatters on it, and be framed as a work of art--

No, she had to be fair. She hadn't really talked to her mother for three years, and they'd never been as close as her mother and Ron were. "Mum, I'd like to switch schools."

"Don't be silly, Ginny, your father doesn't make enough to send you to Beauxbatons."

"I want to go to Egypt, not France."

"You what?"

"The school at Sheta Oasis is a good one. She'll have to learn a few more languages but I'm sure they'll help with that," Bill interjected when their mother rounded on her, not missing a beat when she grabbed her plate and scuttled over to finish eating behind him, "From everything I've heard they provide a well-rounded education and a much greater degree of safety than Hogwarts."

"That's ridiculous," Molly announced as she sat heavily, pouring sugar on her bacon without even noticing. "Hogwarts is perfectly safe, and what sort of danger are you expecting anyway?"

"Voldemort, Mother," Percy entered the fray, looking at their mother over the rims of his glasses. "He's risen again and I'd be very surprised if he didn't attack Hogwarts to capture, torture, maim and kill Potter." He paused, seemed to consider, although if she knew her brother at all he'd had the words long planned, "If he doesn't pay us a visit here first, that is."

"Professor Dumbledore is coming on Thursday to put extra-strong protective charms on this house, I'll have you know, and I have every confidence in his ability to keep Hogwarts safe for all the students," her mother protested as she perched on the arm of Bill's chair and started stealing his breakfast, her own finished. "From Harry down to the youngest first-year."

"Sorry, mother, but be that as it may, many people don't share your confidence." Percy shrugged, spearing another piece of toast with his fork and slathering that prize with butter. "I've doubts as to the effectiveness of any charms Dumbledore could do to prevent Voldemort and his friends from coming to slaughter us next week, and I'm not the only one that's occurred to."

"Oh really? If that's the way you feel, Percy, perhaps you'd rather not be here when Harry is. If it would make you feel safer," their mother snapped, slamming her teacup down to underline her disapproval of his show of sense, or as the woman would see it, cowardice.

"Okay. Penny's dad said I could stay with them until we move in together, they won't mind if I show up on their doorstep with a suitcase. I can take Ginny with me 'til Bill's ready to go back to Cairo."

Their father, Fred, George and Ron were watching the conversation unfold with wide eyes, in such a state of shock at Percy standing up for himself that they were unable to say a word. Ron's mouth opened and closed a few times, the effect looking something like a goldfish out of water, but he couldn't come up with a cohesive defence for Harry...in fact, he looked as if the knowledge she and Percy had both had for some time was only now crashing down between his ears.

"Sounds fine to me," Bill nodded. "I was going to leave on Monday, but maybe Ginny and I'll leave on Friday instead, what with her change of schools and all. I think the year begins mid-August this time, the inundation being low."

"Don't be absurd, Percy," Molly settled on at last. "I didn't mean that you had to go, it was said in a moment of anger. We'll talk about this after breakfast privately, Percy... and Bill, you overstep your authority. Ginny is still my daughter, and I will have the final say on where she goes to school."

"Can we go to school in Mongolia?" George quipped after a minute of silence.

"No."

.

"Percy, I'll talk to you later about your intentions toward that Penelope girl. Bill...what on earth are you thinking? You want to take Ginny thousands of miles away...Ginny, I'm talking to your brother, leave the room until you're called--"

"This is my bedroom, Mum," she pointed out, tugging her suitcase free from underneath her bed where it had been since she last went to Egypt. "Remember? Bill, what should I pack?"

"Underwear," Bill advised, before he turned his attention back to their mother. "Look, Mum, Ginny's not happy at Hogwarts. She went through enough trauma there in her first year and...what did they offer her when they finally found out what was wrong? I'm sure it wasn't counselling..."

"A cup of hot chocolate," Percy answered with a shake of his head as he stretched out on her bed, seeing that no one else seemed to want to take advantage of the seating space. "Mum, I've been thinking for a while now that Ginny should go to a different school. Even if she didn't have bad memories of Hogwarts, the fact that Potter goes there and the entire world seems to know it... well, Potter's got a great big target painted on his back, and Ron's always running around getting into trouble with him. They finally started noticing that Ginny existed last year, and I don't think it's healthy for her to be anywhere near them."

"You're not making sense, Percy. Professor Dumbledore is the one man that You-Kn...Voldemort ever feared. Harry's defeated Voldemort time and time again, I'm sure he can do it again if Dumbledore's not up to it," Molly nodded firmly, waving a hand at her, "And since Harry's not going to get anywhere with that Chinese girl, it only makes sense for Ginny to stay at Hogwarts. Sooner or later, Harry will--"

"Mum! I don't like him any more, not like that! It was a stupid little-girl crush fostered by the hero-worship for him that half our society has...I was ten years old, I'm not a child any more," she protested fervently, covering her face with her hands before they all noticed the colour rising on her cheeks.

It was perfectly true that she didn't fancy Potter any more, not in the slightest. Tom Riddle had half-cured her of that, and close association with Harry...well, as much as one could get being in the same house when Harry generally steered clear of her...had finished it.

Harry was just another shallow boy, his thoughts consumed by Quidditch, how to prove Snape guilty of something or other, and he really didn't seem to understand what girls were even for yet. "If anyone in this family is going to nab him it'll be Ron, you know." Calmer, she lowered her hands and glanced sideways to see Percy and Bill both smirking silently, and continued emboldened by their tacit approval, "After the Triwizard Tournament and all... well, it wasn't me down the bottom of the lake."

"You have to give Harry time to grow up, dear. Sooner or later he'll turn around and realise what a beautiful, wonderful girl you are, you just have to wait long enough," her mother patted her shoulder firmly, trying to pull her into an awkward hug that she slipped out of as fast as she could. "Boys mature slower than girls, it's just the way it is."

"So if I want to get anywhere with someone now I should ask a girl out?" she queried flippantly, tossing a shirt at Bill for his approval or disapproval. He flung it into the suitcase and moved over to help her empty out her drawers, his shoulders shaking with the laughter he didn't dare let escape lest their mother round on him again when she was doing so well anyway.

"That's not very funny, Virginia," Molly snapped, sitting down on the one chair and drawing her wand to send a good half of the neatly-packed clothes in the suitcase back into a heap in the drawer. She returned them to the suitcase and weighed them down with books. "Now stop this nonsense immediately. You're not going to get a girlfriend, you're not going to stay at the Clearwaters' house, and you're not going to school in Egypt. Bill, you shouldn't have encouraged her, you know I don't want her going into pyramids--"

"The school isn't in a pyramid, Mum, and it was her idea," Percy chipped in, polishing his spectacles again. "She doesn't feel safe at Hogwarts, and if she hadn't asked Bill I was going to take her with me when I moved out and send her to Beauxbatons. I've saved enough for her first year and I have a promotion coming up."

"So you want to move out and take your sister away from me! And another thing, Bill, if you think your father and I can afford to pay the exorbitant fees this Sheta Oasis place will charge, you're absolutely mad. We can barely afford to buy new robes for Ron and he actually needs them, it's not just some childish whim--" Their mother pulled out the last card she had, the financial difficulties one.

"I pay taxes in Egypt, Mum, and I have a good job," Bill pointed out gently, ransacking the tiny wardrobe that held most of her skirts and dresses. He pulled free the most recent additions, those which Percy and Penny had bought her when they took her out to London earlier that week, and dropped them into the suitcase. With the addition of books and shoes that she'd carefully packed, it looked like it would need both Bill and Percy to stand on it while she locked it to prevent it bursting open. "All I'll need to buy her is her uniform and supplies, education's fully subsidised by the taxes."

"They probably won't accept her," Molly answered with a cheerfully maniacal look that almost made her worry. If she didn't know what Percy had up his sleeve... "After all, she's only your sister, not your daughter, but at this rate I'd be almost glad to see you take her. Ginny just hasn't been the same girl that she was last year, if you want to take the ungrateful brat away to strange foreign places..."

"And that's where this comes in," Percy said with a very polite smile as he pulled a roll of parchment out of his sleeve, offering it to their mother. "Legal guardianship papers. I had them for getting Ginny myself, but Bill may as well use them. You and Dad just have to sign here, here, and here."

Such a neat trap they had sprung, between them, and their mother's eyes widened as she realised where she'd been led. "I don't have a quill and ink."

"I do!" She handed them over with such enthusiasm that she almost spilled the ink, slipping away from where their mother sat at the poky little desk that dominated a corner of her room before the woman could return the items.

"You'll regret it," their mother warned her, warned Bill. "She'll want to run away from you soon enough. And don't you come crying home in two months when you get to the school and you don't make any more friends than you had at Hogwarts. Then you'll be sorry that you threw away any chances at friendship and love that you and Harry had--"

Ignoring their mother's dire imprecations of future suffering that was sure to befall her, she danced around the tiny room in pure glee, hugging first Bill, then Percy, and then even the woman who scowled at her as she was signed away into Bill's care. She was going away!